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Seeing through disordered scattering materials
The propagation of coherent light through a scattering medium produces speckle patterns in reflection and transmission. Despite the apparent randomness of the speckle patterns, a statistical correlation between the reflected and transmitted intensities survives even in the multiple scattering regime. This mutual information opens up new possibilities for sensing and imaging through scattering media. As an illustrative example, we will show how to image a target located behind an opaque scattering layer using the speckle pattern measured in reflection.
The scattering pattern is also dependent on the presence of partial order in the disordered medium. We will discuss light propagation in partially ordered materials made of discrete scatterers in a transparent matrix. We will show how transparency can emerge from specific types of correlated disorders, and present recent approaches to the fabrication of partially ordered materials by self-organization processes.